A continuing trend in consumer electronic devices such as portable music players, cellular phones, computers, cameras, key chains with storage memory and the like is reduced size. Largely, this trend has been made possible through advances in the miniaturization of the electronic components of such devices. This trend has led, for example, to the creation of consumer electronic devices that are scaled on the order of a few centimeters. Such small-scale devices enable consumers to carry a vast array of electronic capabilities with them.
Unfortunately, battery and other energy storage technologies have not kept pace with this miniaturization trend. Accordingly, as the size of the device has been reduced, smaller batteries are being incorporated into such portable consumer electronic devices. This means that such devices require more frequent recharging and that such devices often require recharging on a daily basis.
It will be appreciated that user convenience is an important feature in the success of consumer products. People have little time or coordination for finding the small connectors to charge these tiny consumer electronic devices and sorting through multiple connectors and chargers to find the right one for a given device and then walk them to a PC for connecting. Further, people often distribute chargers for different devices throughout the home and in places that are related to the usage of the device. For example, a typical charger for a cellular phone can be located in a kitchen or on a dresser, while a charger for a picture-viewing device, video viewing device, a portable music device, or personal digital assistant may be in the family room or den in close proximity to a personal computer. It is often inconvenient to distribute such portable consumer electronic devices for charging each day and to collect such devices when it is time to leave the home.
Moreover, it will be appreciated that user interface technology has also adjusted to this trend in that some small-scale devices have incorporated proportionately smaller displays and smaller user controls. This makes it increasingly difficult to present all of the status information regarding the electronic device on such smaller displays at one time. For example, consumers typically need to know when an electronic device is working, is interacting with a charger such as by being charged or routing data to and/or from the device. A wide variety of indicators, such as status icons, can be used to present such information to a user. As displays get smaller, the size of the indicators must get smaller. However, the ability of people to read indicators and other forms of information presented by a display has remained effectively fixed. Accordingly, manufacturers have typically elected to reduce the number of indicators presented on the display at one time. This prevents a user from determining the status of the device with a single glance as is desired by the user. In addition, when charging multiple devices simultaneously, the status of individual units must be individually checked.
Further, the average size of a person's fingers and the average dexterity in the use of a person's fingers has not improved in concert with the miniaturization of controls on such devices. This leads to frustration during the operation of the device. The devices mentioned have also gained a great deal of memory storage capacity in the forms of miniaturized Hard Drives and high capacity removable memory cards. With this new capacity, small portable devices such as cameras, music players, and personal media players can hold literally thousands of songs and photographs and hundreds of hours of video. Navigating, scrolling through, or selecting individual media elements from this amount of content is a daunting task when provided with only a tiny screen and limited user interface.
Accordingly, many small consumer electronic devices to simply omit display technology from the device and/or to reduce the number of controls incorporated therein. Either of these trends makes such consumer electronic devices more difficult to interact with. To attempt to solve this problem, docking stations are provided for such devices that have connectors that establish communication and power transfer links between the electronic device and a separate terminal, such as a personal computer. This allows the users of such devices to interact with the electronic device by way of a separate terminal, such as a personal computer, while also recharging the battery of the device.
If a docking system is used, it is typically designed to interface with a single type and model of device. Some docking systems such as the EASYSHARE Camera Dock 6000, are provided with mechanical and electro-mechanical adapters to accommodate a limited set of compatible camera models. With this approach the user has to locate the appropriate adapter and use it to configure the dock in order to charge the designated camera and interface it with a personal computer. For multiple devices, multiple docks would be required adding to the number of cables, reducing the number of available communications ports, and reducing the amount of available table or desk surface.
Further, if a compact electronic device is configured for charging and synchronization with a particular computer, and that computer is in use by another user, even wireless data transfer would have to wait until the computer was available. With a wireless charger the user would have to wait until the compact electronic device was sufficiently charged for the device display to function, in order to interface with the unit.
What is needed is a new approach that is capable of charging any of a plurality of devices from a central location, and that also enables consumers to better interact with small scale devices without requiring proximity to a personal computer.